Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
Jenna Cross had been thirty-one when her car went through a guardrail and disappeared into the East River.
Police recovered the vehicle forty-eight hours later.
They found blood inside.
They did not find a body.
The official conclusion was death by drowning with remains carried away by the current.
Dominic never believed it.
"Why didn't you tell investigators?" I asked.
We were back in our penthouse library at midnight with Ortiz and Lila Grant seated across from us.
Dominic stood near the fireplace.
"I did."
"They said there was no evidence she survived."
"Then why did you just say you watched them pull her car from the river like you believed she was dead?"
He looked at me.
"Because after four years, hope started feeling like denial."
Lila opened the copy of the old Halcyon file Ortiz had obtained.
"Jenna Cross was a senior compliance analyst for Meridian Civic Partners."
"She discovered irregular payments linked to the waterfront project."
Ortiz continued.
"According to federal records, she contacted investigators and agreed to testify."
"Forty-eight hours before her scheduled interview, she vanished."
I looked at Dominic.
"And Gavin Rook was suspected."
"Yes."
"Your father protected him."
"Yes."
"Richard Hale was part of the project."
"Yes."
The answers came like stones.
I crossed my arms.
"And Adrian Cole?"
Dominic's expression tightened.
"He was a junior analyst at my father's company."
"Working on Halcyon?"
"Yes."
Ortiz flipped a page.
"Cole gave a statement after Cross disappeared."
"What did he say?"
"That he had never met her."
Dominic looked at him sharply.
"That's false."
Ortiz stopped.
"You're certain?"
"I introduced them."
Nobody spoke.
One lie from four years earlier suddenly changed the man who had sat in our kitchen that morning.
I thought about Adrian's calm expression.
His perfect records.
His careful language.
He had led us toward Aether's ownership chain.
He had also positioned himself in the center of our search.
"Where is he now?" I asked.
Dominic checked his phone.
"He left the office at six."
"Home?"
"Security says yes."
Ortiz stood.
"Don't contact him."
Dominic's eyes hardened.
"If he's involved—"
"If he's involved, calling him tells him we know."
"And if he isn't?"
"Then we don't destroy a man's life because his initials appeared on a whiteboard."
I looked at Dominic.
"Ortiz is right."
Dominic hated that sentence.
But he nodded.
At 12:38, the forensic lab called about the flash drive from Room 1208.
Most of it was encrypted.
One folder was open.
It contained six short video files.
Ortiz played them on his laptop.
The first showed Jenna Cross walking into a parking garage four years earlier.
The timestamp was two days before her disappearance.
The second showed Gavin Rook following her.
The third showed Richard Hale meeting Rook inside a private club.
The fourth showed Vincent Vale, Dominic's father, entering the same building twenty minutes later.
Dominic's face became unreadable.
The fifth file had no image.
Only audio.
A man's voice said, "If she talks, Halcyon collapses."
Another voice answered, "Then she doesn't talk."
I looked at Dominic.
"Is that your father?"
He closed his eyes.
"Yes."
The sixth file began with darkness.
Then a light clicked on.
Jenna Cross sat in a chair facing the camera.
She looked terrified but alive.
A newspaper rested on the table beside her.
The date was six months after her supposed death.
Jenna looked directly into the lens.
"My name is Jenna Cross."
"If this video is being watched, someone failed to keep their promise."
She swallowed.
"Richard Hale knows I survived."
"Gavin Rook knows where I am."
"Vincent Vale arranged my disappearance."
Dominic opened his eyes.
I could barely breathe.
Jenna continued.
"Dominic Vale did not know."
Dominic's head lifted.
"He tried to help me before I disappeared."
"If anything happens to him, it is because his father believed loyalty mattered more than innocence."
The screen went black.
Dominic did not move for several seconds.
Then he asked Ortiz to play the final thirty seconds again.
Jenna's face returned.
She said Dominic did not know.
She said he tried to help.
The screen went dark a second time.
Dominic sat with both elbows on his knees.
"The last thing I said to her was that I would fix it."
I waited.
"I was so certain."
"About what?"
"That being willing to fight my father meant I was powerful enough to beat him."
He laughed bitterly.
"Then Jenna vanished and I learned willingness is not the same as control."
I sat beside him.
"Maybe control was the wrong goal."
He looked at me.
"What was the right one?"
"Keeping your promise as far as you actually could."
"And admitting where you couldn't."
He looked back at the blank screen.
That answer did not comfort him.
It did give him somewhere honest to stand.
Nobody moved.
Dominic stared at his father's frozen reflection in the laptop screen.
For years, he had carried suspicion that he had failed Jenna.
Now we knew his father had hidden her alive.
That was not mercy.
It was control.
"Where was she?" I asked.
Ortiz shook his head.
"The file has no location metadata."
"Can the encrypted folders tell us?"
"Maybe."
Lila looked at the passport.
"If Jenna is still alive, why would her current passport be in Rook's safe?"
The answer made my stomach sink.
"Because he still controls whether she can leave."
Dominic sat down for the first time in an hour.
I remembered the only time Vincent Vale ever invited me to dinner.
It had been three months before Dominic and I married.
Vincent spent most of the meal asking questions that sounded polite until I realized every one of them was measuring something.
Where I grew up.
Whether my parents owned property.
How much debt I carried.
Whether I planned to keep working after marriage.
At dessert, he told Dominic I was "independent in a way that becomes expensive."
I had laughed because I thought it was an insult about money.
Now I understood it differently.
Vincent saw independence as a management problem.
Rook had learned from him.
Dominic had spent years trying not to.
"Your father would have hated what you did Friday," I said.
Dominic looked at me.
"What did I do?"
"You asked me what I wanted before you acted."
He considered that.
"He would have called it weakness."
"Exactly."
I touched his hand.
"Maybe that is why Rook was so sure you'd fail."
Dominic looked toward Jenna's frozen image on the screen.
"He keeps using Vincent's map for a city that changed."
He looked suddenly exhausted.
"My father knew."
I moved beside him.
"Yes."
"He let me think she was dead."
"Yes."
"He let Rook disappear."
I took his hand.
"That doesn't make Rook your responsibility."
Dominic laughed once without humor.
"You have spent twenty-four hours trying to stop people from blaming you for what Preston did."
"Now you're doing the same thing for me."
"Because it's true."
He looked at me.
"Truth is inconvenient like that."
At 1:17, Ortiz received a message from his department.
Dennis Mercer had used one of the passports from the safe to book a train ticket two weeks earlier.
Not for himself.
For Jenna Cross.
The ticket was scheduled for tomorrow morning.
Destination: Washington, D.C.
"Why would Dennis book a train for a woman who's been hidden for four years?" I asked.
Ortiz's expression sharpened.
"Maybe Dennis wasn't running from us."
"Maybe he was trying to get her out."
That possibility rearranged everything again.
Dennis had protected Preston.
Dennis had monitored me.
Dennis had hidden cloned badges.
But perhaps he had also started turning against Rook.
"Then where is he?"
Ortiz checked another message.
"We have traffic camera footage of his car entering the pier garage."
"A second vehicle followed three minutes later."
"What vehicle?"
He turned the screen.
A black sedan entered the garage.
The plate was unreadable.
The driver was not.
Gavin Rook.
Dominic stood.
"Dennis is in danger."
Ortiz nodded.
"If he's still alive."
At 7:05 the next morning, police teams were positioned at Penn Station.
I watched the live updates from Dominic's office.
The train to Washington departed at 8:12.
No one matching Jenna's current passport photo entered the platform.
At 8:07, Ortiz called.
"She isn't here."
"Maybe she knew the station would be watched."
"Maybe."
"Or maybe Rook got to Dennis before he could move her."
I hated how calmly he said it.
A message arrived on my temporary phone.
Unknown number.
My pulse jumped.
The text contained an address and two words.
COME ALONE.
I showed Dominic immediately.
His response was predictable.
"Absolutely not."
I handed the phone to Ortiz through a secure video call.
He ran the address.
"Closed beauty salon in Queens."
I almost laughed at the cruelty of the location.
A beauty salon.
After someone shaved my head.
"It's bait," Dominic said.
Ortiz nodded.
"Obviously."
Another message arrived.
A photograph loaded.
Dennis sat tied to a chair.
His face was bruised.
A newspaper lay across his knees.
Today's date was visible.
Beneath the photograph, a new message appeared.
BRING THE 1208 DRIVE OR HE DIES.
Dominic looked at Ortiz.
"They think Elena has the drive."
"Good," Ortiz said.
I stared at him.
"Good?"
"Because the drive is in police evidence."
He leaned closer to the screen.
"And whoever sent that message just gave us a reason to believe Dennis is alive."
A third message appeared before anyone could speak.
This one was not text.
It was a live video link.
Ortiz told me not to open it.
I opened it anyway.
The screen showed Dennis in the same chair.
Behind him stood a woman with shoulder-length blond hair.
She stepped closer to the camera.
Her face matched the passport from Room 1208.
Jenna Cross.
She looked directly at me.
Then she lifted one finger to her lips.
Dennis turned his head toward her.
"Don't trust the police address," he whispered.
The feed cut out.
Ortiz swore.
Dominic looked at me.
"What did he mean?"
I replayed the four words in my head.
Don't trust the police address.
Then I noticed something in the frozen image.
On the wall behind Jenna was a reflection from a framed mirror.
A man stood outside the camera's view.
Only part of his face was visible.
But I knew him.
May you like
I had eaten breakfast across from him less than twenty-four hours earlier.
Adrian Cole.
